A study investigated the effect of the language in which a text is written on the imagery and emotional response of biliterate readers. Subjects were 64 native Mandarin-speaking university students majoring in English in a Chinese university. Subjects read a letter describing a typical trip on a third-class train in either English or Chinese, then listed and rated the strength (none to vivid) of the mental images they formed during reading. They also described and rated affective responses, and indicated the degree of difficulty they had in reading the letter. Results indicate that readers of the Chinese text reported more imagery and emotional response than readers of English, although ratings of these factors did not vary greatly across languages. Reading time was almost three times as great for the English text. These results contrasted sharply with those of an earlier study, in which subjects had lived in the United States. Contains 14 references. (MSE)